Black Coffee
by watercolor wasteland
Summary: His pen lingers a moment too long on a wisp of hair, the lines bleeding through the thin paper — the ink as black as the bottom of his cup. — Rohan, implied Rohan/Reimi


**title:** Black Coffee  
 **characters/pairings:** rohan kishibe, implied rohan/reimi  
 **warnings:** n/a  
 **summary:** His pen lingers a moment too long on a wisp of hair, the lines bleeding through the thin paper — the ink as black as the bottom of his cup.  
 **a/n:** originally published on ao3. i don't have a particular preference for where i publish stuff first, but i do know that the jojo fandom is a little more active there. for archival purposes, i'm posting it here too.

" _i'm moody all the morning_  
 _mourning all the night_  
 _and in between it's nicotine_  
 _and not much heart to fight"_

※

His life goes on just as it had before.

(Except it doesn't.)

He stops by the same grocery store. He takes the same route home. He glares at Josuke and Okuyasu when he passes by as they squawk over some inane matter, as is custom for them. Still holes himself up for the rest of the day, furiously inking pages with crystalline concentration — nothing unusual.

It would be fine, if "nothing unusual" weren't anathema to his entire existence.

The air in his workroom at once feels suffocating in its vacuity, thick with nothingness. His ideas can't survive underneath the cumbersome weight.

Absurdity. He, Rohan Kishibe, can work masterfully in any environment, under any circumstances, yet he's bested by a somewhat trying morning?

His grip on his pen tightens. The formatted page, otherwise blank, mocks him.

He concedes to himself for tonight, and tonight only.

※

Rohan typically dislikes venturing out after the gloaming of the day, but on this particular night, he finds himself left with little recourse. He had attempted to just call it a night after several failed attempts at accomplishing anything, but sleep simply was not favoring him.

Morioh, being the small, decidedly unhappening town that it is, has few dedicated places for aspiring intellectuals and creators to burn the midnight oil. There is one place, however, that Koichi informed him of in passing. He dismissed it at the time, but he finds himself standing before its entrance now, nestled between two more legitimate businesses, well past 1 AM.

A far cry from the more upscale establishments that he regularly patronizes, this seedy hole-in-the-wall is barely any larger than the average walk-in closet. The ceiling hangs low; he feels a sharp but fleeting stab of claustrophobia. Four stools line the bar, all of them vacant. The lighting is almost nonexistent — two small lamps hang from the ceiling, their dim yellow bulbs flickering at unpredictable intervals — and the furniture is at least twice as old as him. He'd normally turn his nose up at such an obviously shady place, but it's the only place within (reasonable) walking distance that's open this late.

"Can I get you something?" says a mild voice from the back. Shortly afterward, a head pokes through the curtain, eyes wide and awake. The girl looks a little too young to be working this late, but he didn't peg this place as the kind that would dutifully submit to labor laws anyway.

"Coffee, black," he responds without looking up from his sketchpad.

Rohan can see her nod in the periphery before disappearing into the back once more.

Coffee of that strength probably won't help his sleep problems any, but perhaps it'll imbue him with the drive to actually do something useful with this time.

She emerges from behind the curtain, a generously sized mug in her hand. She flashes him a strained, polite smile before setting the mug down on the bar before him. Good. He isn't in the mood for mindless pleasantries, anyway. It's almost a relief to have someone not remark on the fact that yes, he is Rohan Kishibe, famed manga author.

The woman heads back before he can say thank you. Just as well.

He breaks out his sketchpad, takes a dainty sip of the coffee (it's kind of shitty, but it'll do), and uncaps his pen. He has no desire to actually progress on his work, but perhaps a few sketches will get the cogs turning once more.

As he works, intermittently taking heartier swigs out of the mug, the figure that emerges from his fingertips is that of a girl. A young girl, not unlike the one working this late night shift, or even—

No. He will not entertain that thought.

It doesn't take long for the caffeine to kick in, and he's drawing with an increasing amount of gusto. He neglects his coffee in favor of lovingly detailing her dress, ribbons, a headband, and she had a small nose, he remembers, and short hair—

He stops. His pen lingers a moment too long on a wisp of hair, the line bleeding through the thin paper — the ink as black as the bottom of his cup.

"Damn it," he mutters. Every other line is crisp and deliberate; a simple mistake has made the whole thing an eyesore.

The longer he stares, the stranger he feels, until he's suddenly seized by agitated helplessness and starts scribbling the drawing out — first slowly, with increasing speed, until he's clenching his teeth and furiously crossing everything out, every last trace of her.

She came unbidden into his life, and nothing was the same. Nothing was the same, and he still doesn't know if that's a good or a bad thing. She could have stayed a forgotten memory, and sometimes — such as now — he thinks he would have preferred it stay that way.

And yet, he could have walked away from her. But she assumed the best of him.

(And if he sits still and peruses the bookshelves of his memory, he can remember, vaguely — oh so vaguely — that she always had.)

He hears a distinctly masculine whimper and wonders what's happening behind that curtain, and it isn't until he looks down at the damp spots adorning the page that he registers the noise as coming from _him_.

Ridiculous. He, Rohan, he could not allow himself to become such a sorry sight all because of something so trivial. Contemptuously, he imagines what Josuke and the others would think if they saw him like this.

But no one is here. The young woman is still in the back, and she's probably seen worse things at a place like this.

" _And what about you, little Rohan? Will you cry because you miss me so much?"_

His chest feels impossibly tight as he gasps for air, holding his head in his hands as tears continue to fall freely onto the paper beneath him.

There had been nothing tethering her to Morioh anymore. The selfish child in him struggles to see why that meant she had to leave. She could have stayed. She could have stayed, if she truly wanted to.

"If you adored me as much as you claimed, you wouldn't have left, you stupid girl," he whispers harshly at the desecrated drawing, holding back an instinctual sob. His words sound less bitter and more tormented than he intended.

It feels good to cry. It feels awful, but it feels good.

He finally wipes his eyes with his handkerchief and composes himself, chastising himself for such an immature outburst outside of the privacy of his own home.

Rohan reaches into his pocket to pay, not bothering to wait for a receipt, before his eyes fall back once more on the sketchbook. Guilt, a feeling typically foreign to him, creeps along his neck, making the hairs there stand on end.

Despite the emotions roiling within him at this very moment, he calmly sets the bills down, tucks his materials under his arm, and sighs heavily.

※

He returns home just an hour or two shy of sunrise, and it somehow always surprises him how true it is that the darkest time of the day is right before dawn.

As he slips into bed and shuts his eyes, he remembers something curious she told him a mere two weeks before she departed.

" _Oh, it was so cute, you know. I didn't watch you very often, but sometimes you wouldn't want to go back. You'd say things like, 'I'm gonna marry Reimi! And we're gonna buy a big house and have lots of dogs! And then I'll never have to go home!'"_

 _She laughed, throwing her head back, before opening her eyes and gazing at him wistfully._

" _I adored you, Rohan. You're all grown up now, but I still do. I wish things had been different so that we didn't have to meet this way."_

Yes, it was unfortunate indeed. But they'll meet another way.

There is always another way.


End file.
